Ultra-Complicated Watches

The 10 Most High-End, Ultra-Complicated Watches Of All Time

It is a truth universally acknowledged: Watch brands love nothing more than showing off. While a watch that simply tells the time is all well and good, what really adds prestige and value to a piece (and to the brand producing it) are hard-to-produce complications. Astronomical displays, minute repeaters that chime the hours and minutes, elaborate perpetual calendars, and tourbillon escapements are impressive in their own right, but squeezing as many of these as possible into a single piece is when you can really start adding a lot of zeros onto the price.

Ironically, it’s often the case that the more such watches can do, the less readable — and consequently useful — they become, but seeing as they’re mostly going to sit in a billionaire collector’s safe, that’s not always a problem. This isn’t a list of the 10 most complicated watches; it's instead a look at some of the most interesting pieces in the heady, dizzying world of ultra-complication.